The Garden of Gethsemane

How alone our Lord Jesus must have felt in that Holy garden where He sweat drops of real blood over the anxiety and anguish the horrible devil gave HIM after showing HIM the cruel treatment and finally the pain filled death He was about to incur. Having His apostles that He had been with for 3 years, not too far-off in the distance, sleeping ,unaware of the tragedy and triumph that was about to unfold.

     Even asking God to let this cup pass over HIM. Showing His humanity in all things but sin. The trees and ground that He lay on were even probably crying. The angels looking down cast as they saw their King in such agony.

     Sweet Archangel Saint Gabriel, sent with God's orders to give His Son strength and comfort. So much happening in that Garden of woe. All of the sins, past, present and future, could have only been withstood by an Almighty God. The new Adam, beginning His appearance to a world that so desperately needed a Savior, and the cries of the people, "Crucify him".

     We surely needed and still need a Garden of Gethsemane. A garden of penitential repentance for the grievous sins that still burden and sadden our God. True Repentance for sin was shown by Jesus as the ultimate example of appeasing God's sorrow over the creation that was intended to be good, for all of mankind.

     Still... We sin and disgrace our God by following the evil of this world. Destroying it and our souls by the self pride and neglect of our caring.

     We can sit with Jesus in that garden, if not only so that He won't be alone. To help appease the sorrow we feel for continually falling. We enter into a Garden of Gethsemane when we are truly sorry for our sins. God is so merciful and loving that He allows us to stay there till the contrition is real, then releases us into the same ecstasy that our Lord felt when sweet Gabriel came to wipe away His tears.

     Let us never forget that "garden" which turned our hope into heaven. We must never forget the suffering Jesus took innocently, for each of us as we proceed with a Lent that is destined for an Easter morning.